Kirk here. It seems Mr. Kimura has won the governorship. I have nothing against him personally but I was rooting for Mr. Koyama (former Kumamoto-city mayor), in part because I know him but also because Mr. Kiyama campaigned with the support of the LDP and the LDP has given me numerous reasons to dislike them (connections to the Moonies, recent financial scandals, xenophobic and nationalistic stances of various individual politicians, etc.). The race was seen as a sort of referendum on the LDP and, sadly, it looks like the response from the people of Kumamoto was “no problem.”
The article doesn’t share any details about how Mr. Kimura managed to win but I suspect that a combination of LDP organizational power and low voter turn out (apathy) had something to do with it.
P.S. The gentleman you see in back of Mr. Kiyama is NAKAYAMA Mineo, president of Sojo University. I’ve posted about his connections to the Moonies in the past in the following posts:
